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You're entitled to an opinion, and I respect the time and effort you put in to post your thoughts, but I can't in good faith allow a statement like ^ this ^ to go uncontested.
Mainly, because it is completely inaccurate.
Mainly, because in Bannerlord, there is no efficiency of movement. A lack of responsiveness in both attack windup/release and blocking inputs is not efficient -it's simply unresponsive gameplay. If we want to talk about foot movement, then that example is even worse. Due to the janked acceleration and rotation speeds, the movement is haphazard. Positioning is nowhere near as important as it was in Warband because of Bannerlord's omnidirectional start-stop 0-60 drag-racing mechanics. This applies to both duels and inf fights in Skirmish. Positioning, distance management, and timing take a backseat in the current melee fighting meta because of the penchant for both opponents to be able to easily (many times accidentally) slip right past one another, with one (or both) ending up behind the other player, or likewise, for one player to effortlessly glide in one direction, either through strafing, pirouetting, or doing hit-and-run spins, while the other chases them. This fighting process has nothing to do with efficiency of movement, it's just sword fighting on ice skates.
In Warband however, efficiency of movement was not only applicable, it was crucial. Fights at high skill levels were decided more by position, timing, distance, weapon angling, and meta-gaming than they were by any sort of tricky feint combo ingrained into one's muscle memory. Crafty feints certainly had their place, but it was more used for throwing the opponent off of their balance or rhythm than as a fight-ending maneuver. Most importantly, anyone who's played Warband can attest that the foot movement actually felt "weighted". No, not sluggish. It felt like your character's feet were actually planted on firm solid ground. You felt as though your character was held to the earth by gravity -not in a slow or bad way, but in a way that was understandable and intuitive. This in turn made positioning in melee not only applicable, but also something you can adjust for (in case of your opponent).
NOTE: If you want a great example of the differences in "efficiency of movement" between Bannerlord and Warband, look no further than the weapon angling. In Warband, you could "tilt" your swing up or down, thus changing the angle at which it was swung/stabbed. This created different and confusing reads for your opponent, who had to deal with this subtle (but important) change in movement. Not only that, but weapon angling also had different effects on timing, allowing your strike to reach your opponent's hitbox quicker at certain angles. In Bannerlord however, the possible weapon angling tilt is much less. In addition, subtle changes in weapon tilt are actually not shown on your opponent's monitor. That's right, your subtle inputs are in fact rendered moot, because they don't show up in your character's in-game animation (they appear only on your screen). Yes, extreme weapon angling/tilts do show up, but very slightly -nowhere near reflecting the amount of technical inputs you're putting in on your end. An example like this clearly refutes the theory that Bannerlord's mechanics have a greater efficiency of movement than those of Warband.
I find it tragic that the same mechanics which made Warband so enjoyable (seamless responsiveness, near-perfect symmetry between player's designs (inputs) and their character's exact actions) were only half-implemented into Bannerlord. It will be remembered as the tragedy of our generation.
I agree that the combat in Warband looked terrible and was a massive barrier of entry for new players.
Warband had exceptional skill depth with lots of room for individual style and personality, which is what made it so fun (addicting) for veteran players.
At any given point in time, even under intense pressure, Warband had usually one or two optimal things to do, followed by a number of personal style choices assuming that you survived the next couple of seconds. This occurred between classes and not just 1v1 duels. For example if you're in a corner, about to be bumped by a cav, there's still stuff you can do. Jump kicks, angle yourself between enemies and cav, both, neither, go aggressive and try to spam the infantry that's trying to spam you because you're outnumbered, ect.
I would call this adaptive APM (actions per minute) or "skill expression."
In Bannerlord, APM is much lower and the number of conscious choices you have to make is considerably dumbed down and slowed. If you're fighting the best player on the server or a new player who picked up the game last week, you might not even be able to tell. If you were to keep fighting them, you'd be able to figure it out, but compared to Warband, you could tell just by their movement and first attack or block the rough level of skill they were at. That's because Warband exuded skill expression while Bannerlord is mostly relegated to teamplay. (Which, by the way, Warband also had lots of.)
What people want for Bannerlord is for skill expression (or even just some baseline APM) to exist while also looking fun and enticing to new players to grow the scene.
Warband had exceptional skill depth with lots of room for individual style and personality, which is what made it so fun (addicting) for veteran players.
At any given point in time, even under intense pressure, Warband had usually one or two optimal things to do, followed by a number of personal style choices assuming that you survived the next couple of seconds. This occurred between classes and not just 1v1 duels. For example if you're in a corner, about to be bumped by a cav, there's still stuff you can do. Jump kicks, angle yourself between enemies and cav, both, neither, go aggressive and try to spam the infantry that's trying to spam you because you're outnumbered, ect.
I would call this adaptive APM (actions per minute) or "skill expression."
In Bannerlord, APM is much lower and the number of conscious choices you have to make is considerably dumbed down and slowed. If you're fighting the best player on the server or a new player who picked up the game last week, you might not even be able to tell. If you were to keep fighting them, you'd be able to figure it out, but compared to Warband, you could tell just by their movement and first attack or block the rough level of skill they were at. That's because Warband exuded skill expression while Bannerlord is mostly relegated to teamplay. (Which, by the way, Warband also had lots of.)
What people want for Bannerlord is for skill expression (or even just some baseline APM) to exist while also looking fun and enticing to new players to grow the scene.
rektasaurus
Squire
Criticism received.
I can appreciate the passion you all have for the nuances of Warband. I’m not one of you. I’m a newcomer. I don’t expect to be treated much differently and I thank those of you who actually read my thoughts. After all, what right do I have to offer any critical analysis of a game you all have been learning about for the past ten years, and how could I add my voice to the discussion without coming off as arrogant? Maybe I should just go back to the kid’s table.
I too want a game which has high skill expression, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want a watered down version of warband. I say that as a newcomer. It should be easy to pick up but hard to master.
I have my criticisms of the game too. I’d urge you all to reread my post and consider that it’s not just my opinion but also my views as someone who has just picked up the game that may be of value. I mean most of the mechanics you all hate seem to cater to exactly me, a newcomer. Wouldn’t you like to hear my thoughts about the class system that was designed specifically to appeal to me and make the game easier for me to understand? Couldn’t you all be in your own echo chamber?
Bannerlord’s combat, movement, and client/server issues aside, I can for sure see, after explanation, how Warband’s movement, positioning, and meta is better developed and could have more depth, and what you have described is what I also want. My point is that it’s exactly the physics based system that will allow Bannerlord to far surpass whatever Warband was able to achieve. And that I can actually feel the same things you describe but the game is just called Bannerlord.
Swordfighting on ice skates sounds like fun but is not what I’m after, and it tilts me too to get wrecked by that too. What I can appreciate, and want, is movement that can better simulate stepping to the side of my opponent and weaving my sword into them.
Many of the things you all describe experiencing in warband is something I too want to experience.
I can appreciate the passion you all have for the nuances of Warband. I’m not one of you. I’m a newcomer. I don’t expect to be treated much differently and I thank those of you who actually read my thoughts. After all, what right do I have to offer any critical analysis of a game you all have been learning about for the past ten years, and how could I add my voice to the discussion without coming off as arrogant? Maybe I should just go back to the kid’s table.
I too want a game which has high skill expression, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want a watered down version of warband. I say that as a newcomer. It should be easy to pick up but hard to master.
I have my criticisms of the game too. I’d urge you all to reread my post and consider that it’s not just my opinion but also my views as someone who has just picked up the game that may be of value. I mean most of the mechanics you all hate seem to cater to exactly me, a newcomer. Wouldn’t you like to hear my thoughts about the class system that was designed specifically to appeal to me and make the game easier for me to understand? Couldn’t you all be in your own echo chamber?
Bannerlord’s combat, movement, and client/server issues aside, I can for sure see, after explanation, how Warband’s movement, positioning, and meta is better developed and could have more depth, and what you have described is what I also want. My point is that it’s exactly the physics based system that will allow Bannerlord to far surpass whatever Warband was able to achieve. And that I can actually feel the same things you describe but the game is just called Bannerlord.
Swordfighting on ice skates sounds like fun but is not what I’m after, and it tilts me too to get wrecked by that too. What I can appreciate, and want, is movement that can better simulate stepping to the side of my opponent and weaving my sword into them.
Many of the things you all describe experiencing in warband is something I too want to experience.
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Fyren338
Regular
if I start a swing, and then notice that my swing won't hit, I want to take it back. If I'm quick enough to realize my swing won't work I want to instantly be able to go back to blocking. Which you could in warband! You're combat sense and speed allowed fixing of mistakes. If you start the wrong swing in bannerlord. You're f'd there's nothing you can do, panic and try to block but the animation of starting the swing takes priority too bad. Made weirder by the fact that stances effect heavily how that applies and movement effects the stances. It's become the game's fault that I died and nothing is more frustrating in a skill based game to die due to faults in the game instead of your own mistakes.
Glad you mentioned this. I don't think the stance debacle gets nearly as much attention as it should.
>Stances affect both weapon swing speed and range, therefore stances play a huge role in melee fighting.
>But stances are affected by movement instead of a key to toggle them, making it impossible to keep track of once the fighting gets intense.
>Unpredictable stances (for both you and your opponent) = massive RNG.
>How can one fight using distance and timing (which involves thoroughly knowing the reach and speed of both you and your opponent's weapons) when the stance system randomizes combat parameters to such a degree?
TLDR: The stance system, while a noble idea in theory, in practical use has been shown to be a Pandora's Box of RNG -one that looks like no one will able to close (or even at the very least mitigate).
Aka **** that has been said over a year ago in alpha testing, stances are wack
rektasaurus
Squire
I really like stances. I genuinely think they’re well done and add a lot of depth to the game. I believe they should stay in but they definitely need their own toggle key aside from the movement keys for better control as well as a big buff to the damage value for using the correct stance, preferably to the thrust and overheads since the right/left swings are already overpowered as ****.
The rng aspect currently really is awful and detrimental to competitive play. It actually takes wayyy too much time to drop guard to switch stance deliberately for it to be a real consideration even though I try my casual little heart out to practice it. Even then the pay off for paying attention to my and my opponent’s stances seems very little compared to timing and positioning considerations. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that Pandora’s box can’t be closed but I really do believe the rng can be and absolutely should be mitigated.
I look forward to news about next week’s upcoming patch and I’m very hopeful that it doesn’t get borked. Indeed kudos to the posters in the previous 12 pages.
- Menu option to enable/disable stance change using strafe keys
- Inclusion of “change stance” command bound to “Q” key by default
- Buff “correct” stance damage for thrusts and overheads
The rng aspect currently really is awful and detrimental to competitive play. It actually takes wayyy too much time to drop guard to switch stance deliberately for it to be a real consideration even though I try my casual little heart out to practice it. Even then the pay off for paying attention to my and my opponent’s stances seems very little compared to timing and positioning considerations. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that Pandora’s box can’t be closed but I really do believe the rng can be and absolutely should be mitigated.
I look forward to news about next week’s upcoming patch and I’m very hopeful that it doesn’t get borked. Indeed kudos to the posters in the previous 12 pages.
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No one i know has deliberately decided to change their position to change their stance. Stances should just stick to visuals. They add no depth except more to the RNG feeling
Winning or losing a fight simply because you were in the left stance rather than the right stance, because when you mashed the key to change stance the game simply decided not to because of how it behaves to generate stance changes, and your attack was a few points shorter than it should've been, and you lose the entire game because of it; is an extremely frustrating feeling. Equally as bad as the block delay for someone like me, who relies more heavily on footwork and timing than blocking, as my fighting style.
I'd advocate removing the stances altogether, but if they're going to stay, then creating an option in the settings to remove movement-based stance changes in exchange for a hotkey that changes stance is the absolute bare minimum.
I'd advocate removing the stances altogether, but if they're going to stay, then creating an option in the settings to remove movement-based stance changes in exchange for a hotkey that changes stance is the absolute bare minimum.
Stances are irrelevant and have been irrelevant for months now. This is something you'd know if you actually played the game.
You're right, I have about 3 hours of playtime in the last 2 months, not that that is relevant since the game has seen nothing of substance changed to multiplayer in even longer than that. The only reference to stances in any of the patch notes since release are " Crouching is prevented during an attack in order to prevent unwanted stance switches", which is almost completely irrelevant to this discussion. In my 10 minutes of playtime yesterday, the stances still felt the same, which is in line with lack of changes in the patch notes. So that stances are irrelevant to you is absolutely meaningless to me. The couple of people I know that still play the game who I've talked to say stances are still annoying and still contribute to making the combat feel inconsistent. Have whatever opinion you want, but stances absolutely are still relevant as a piece of the whole as to why combat feels terrible, inconsistent, and seemingly unresponsive.
lol. I don't really care which three noobs you've talked to. I can tell you in competitive play, the only factor of stance that matters is the stab animation, and that boils down to only switching between right swing and stab when strafing right and vice versa. This is something that any semi-good player knows to do instinctively and actually serves as a good restrictor to not have generic 2H feints revolve around the stab animation as much as in Warband.
The speed boost which everyone hated, I wouldn't even know if it even exists at all at this point. If it did, even then the weighting for combat timings would be: 60% weapon speed, 35% positioning, 5% stance (if it all)
Stop microwaving beta rhetoric if you don't know what you're talking about.
If by noobs you mean competitive players with thousands of hours and 8-10 years of Warband experience; then yes.
Dunning-Kruger: the post. I don't care about what bracket you think you play in. Bannerlord "competitive" doesn't even truly exist yet since almost nobody even plays the game seriously. Wait until the combat is fixed and try and fight some people from Warband before running around proclaiming you know what you're talking about.
That all depends on how you choose to play the game, and at what level. Even a tiny 2% range or speed boost to a swing based on stances completely changes the outcome of combat in a top-skill environment. And the result from stances is even greater than that. All other things even, being in the wrong stance at the wrong time because the game decided to not switch your stance, leads to you losing 100% of the time.
Start microwaving your head, and save people the trouble of responding to you.
Thousands of hours of, Bannerlord? I don't know any such person, unless we are talking about someone who leaves his game open to farm hours. Warband doesn't matter jack **** in this discussion, so if you were referring to that, I don't know what to tell you. A person who favors Warband combat would find all kinds of things awkward about Bannerlord timings, that doesn't mean that they actually know that the source of their complaints are stances. I'd guess they just blame those because they were "the thing everyone said made combat annoying in beta", so it must be that.
I play the game here and now, and I am telling you from the accumulated experience what I know. I see you got terribly offended by my remark (which is 100% guaranteed on point), so you seek to discredit me based on outside factors instead of actually talking about the subject.
I hated stances, but even then I understand how they've developed. You don't. You know you aren't being objective, so why do you talk back at me?
So we are at the point when we are defending stances because they are irrelevant, although they don't add anything except RNG feeling. Oh boy, we are doomed.
I'm not defending them, I replied to a wall of text that blew their importance way out of proportion. Knowing how TW operates, they would never end up removing them completely. So knowing this, people wanted their effects to be reduced to the point where they are almost exclusively a visual effect. From my perspective, this has been realized.
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